As a person ages, they generally incur tooth and bone loss requiring prosthetic replacement as provided by the dental profession. One of the more important aspects of this replacement procedure is the need to solidly anchor within the available bone structure those implants used to secure individual (replacement artificial tooth) or collective (e.g., denture) dental prosthetic. When teeth lose bone around their roots, the bone (e.g., mandibular arch or the maxillary arch) may become uneven (either thinned out or too bulky) in various places in the respective dental arch. This bone condition may make the dental restorative process in that particular area more difficult than when such bone loss has not occurred. It could be thought as building a house/foundation on an unleveled/uneven ground.
In order for the dental prosthetic (or restoration) to be properly fitted to the patient in a substantially esthetically and functionally acceptable position, the dental health care professional (e.g. dental surgeon) may first have to alter the bone of the dental surgical site (especially in those situations where the dental prosthetic is redressing significant tooth loss). This corrective process could start by making one or more incisions in gum area that otherwise designates the dental surgical or restoration site. These incisions substantially allow the gum tissue to be peeled back to expose the bone at the dental surgical site. The dental surgeon, in order to generally make dental surgical site/dental arch symmetrical in all relevant dimensions for the dental restoration (e.g., removable denture) or implant sites (e.g. fixed prosthetics), may then apply one or more cutting tools to generally reduce or remove unwanted high points or thickened places on the exposed bone structure. In other instances, the dental surgeon may add bone material to the exposed bone structure to further fill out the arch's profile or otherwise strengthen its structure.
During this process, the dental surgeon could bring the top portion of the alveolar ridge (e.g., one of the two jaw ridges either on the roof of the mouth or the bottom of the mouth that contain the sockets or alveoli of the teeth) to the correct surgical dimensions (“leveling out”) by utilizing a bone foundation guide generally placed upon and secured to the bone structure to guide the cutting/augmenting of the exposed bone. The bone foundation guide solves the problem of “estimating” the vertical height and width of the bone at the “coronal” level by guiding the surgeon's operation of the cutting tools and/or augmentation of the bone. This allows subsequent and accurate placement of the dental implants and respective prosthetics at the proper patient-specific vertical and horizontal levels. This bone adjustment process may also provide for the creation of the proper inter-occlusal room (e.g., the space that exists between the opposing teeth and the open tissue (e.g., that will receive the dental prosthetic) to generally insure that proper jaw operation and alignment, smile line and phonetics occur when the dental prosthetic is finally located within the patient's mouth.
After the exposed bone has been properly been prepared (e.g., reduced/augmented), the bone foundation guide may be removed. A dental implant surgical guide may be subsequently fitted and attached in its place at the remodeled bone of dental surgical site. The dental implant surgical guide may be used to guide the operation of implant accessories needed to prepare the dental surgical site to receive the dental implants. The dental implant surgical guide may then be used to suitably locate the dental implants into the prepared bone structure. After the dental implants are properly located, the dental implant surgical guide may be removed and healing abutments (if required) may be fitted to the dental implants to create a space in the reattached gum proximate to the dental implant(s) that receives a portion (e.g., the base) of prosthetic (e.g., tooth). Once the healing abutments are attached, the gum tissue may sutured back up sand around the dental implant/healing abutment.
As needed, a full upper or full lower denture/tooth may be fitted to the implants either at the close of the dental surgery or later after healing of the tissues/osseo-integration of bone to implant(s) has occurred. Once the healing/osseo-integration has finalized, the dental surgeon could remove the healing abutments to open up the space proximate to the implants that receives the base of the prosthetic to place and affix the dental prosthetic securely to the implant(s).
The bone foundation guide and the implant dental surgical guide for the implants are generally considered separate instruments that are generally designed, manufactured and used independently of one another other. The design and creation of these guides can be accomplished through digital dentistry (e.g., pre-surgical digital methods and associated apparatuses to obtain and merge medical imaging information taken from the patient's mouth and/or dental castings of the patient's mouth to create a patient-specific virtual models of the preoperative and post-operative mouth and a surgical plan connecting the two models) or manually by dental art and hand (e.g., analogue dental design and preparation).
This separation or compartmentalization of dental guide capabilities could result in higher costs, manpower, and surgical time that could be found than if the two dental guides could be combined into one multipurpose device. The use of such a combination dental appliance could accordingly lead to an increase in the affordability of such dental procedures and results.
What could be needed is a bone foundation guide-dental implant surgical guide combination wherein the dental implant surgical guide directly and reversibly attaches to the bone foundation guide in situ after the open bone at the surgical site has been properly reduced/augmented using the bone foundation guide. The dental implant surgical guide, by attaching directly to or through the bone foundation guide as anchored, could utilize the bone foundation guide as a base to generally position the dental implant/implant accessories through the open surgical space to provide proper implant placement relative to the patient's dental surgical site.